Jailbreak

Cydia

Addition released their application iPhoneModem Saturday through the MMi Cydia source. They describe it as "an application for the iPhone that aims at making it really easy to use the iPhone's internet connection on your computer," and they deliver.

A while back, we posted a how to on tethering the iPhone using NateTrue's method - which required some command line knowledge and a few network tweaks on your OS X box. Until now, this was pretty much the easiest way to tether your 3G iPhone (and still is a great method which only takes a few minutes).

iPhoneModem makes tethering a 10 second process. I've been testing it the past few hours, and its incredibly well-designed and functional. For those of you running OS X Leopard (iPhoneModem is actively working on the desktop client for MacOS 10.4 and Microsoft Windows, as well as a 1.x iPhone version of the app), you simply install their Leopard app (200kb .dmg direct download), open it, and press connect. This will automatically create an ad-hoc network named iPhoneModem on your Mac.

Then, on your iPhone, go to your settings and join the iPhoneModem network.

Once connected, open the iPhoneModem app on the iPhone. It will automatically connect (assuming you've got the iPhoneModem running on your Mac), and that's it - you're tethered. Open Safari on your Mac, you should be browsing already.

It's really that simple. I've tested it on both my MacBook and MacBook Pro, with no issues at all. Browsing over 3G is of course fast, and battery draining. Make sure your iPhone is plugged in.

The Addition devs note:

If you can use the web, using Safari, but other Internet applications are not working:
- make sure that the application you are using supports a "Socks Proxy" and see how you can enable it, for example Firefox does not look at the System Preferences and you have to manually configure it on it's own preferences dialog.

Their original plan was to release through AppStore, but Apple has yet to approve their request, which was made in July of 08. Also, Apple has a shaky history of approving tethering apps (remember NetShare's approved, pulled, approved, pulled antics?)

The app is shareware, with a $9.99 (PayPal only) price to remove the annoying registration nags (well spent for the quality of this app). The registration codes are based on IMEI.

Nice job, Addition.

edit: previous issues of security have been resolved in current version (2.0.0+).